> It used to be that a well-written document was a proof-of-work that the author thought things through (or at least spent some time thinking about it).

I think you hit the nail on the head here. The problem isn't so much that people can do bad work faster than ever now, its that we can no longer rely on the same heuristics for quickly assessing a given piece of work. I dont have a great answer. But I do still think it has something to do with trust and how we build relationships with each other.